Data Privacy and Cyber Security in Healthcare with IT Asset Management and Risk Assessment

The digital revolution happening in the healthcare industry is prone to a great cybersecurity risk. As healthcare organizations migrate sensitive data to new networks and incorporate IoT devices, cybersecurity becomes even more crucial. By 2019, over 25 million records have been compromised in various data breaches.?

The COVID19 pandemic has exposed the weaknesses in the healthcare industry’s cybersecurity and as a result, the industry has seen an increased number of attacks with serious consequences. Patient data includes personally identifiable information (names, dates of birth, addresses, bank account numbers) and medical information (ailments, disabilities, abuse, mental conditions). A data leak can damage the reputation of both doctors and their patients.

Following are different Healthcare related cybersecurity standards/laws:

• US - Healthcare IT security standards
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• EU - General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Canada - Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)
• Australia – Privacy Act
• India – Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act
• South Korea – Personal Information Protection Act
• China – Cyber Security Law
• Taiwan – Personal Data Protection Act

Healthcare IT asset management and Risk Assessment

IT asset management allows to get a clear picture of all the devices on the network. It is possible to discover every asset on the network and create a complete inventory of all devices on the network, including Windows, Linux, and Mac devices, printers, routers, switches, and, in the case of a hospital or other medical environments, any networked medical devices.

For security and data breach protection, you need a much more in-depth set of inventories of assets. Asset management is all about providing the baseline for risk assessment and control. Management?should be given the ability to know and assess risk and to assign means?to mitigate that risk for the business and operations.

It is advisable for all healthcare ecosystem players to do complete asset management and risk assessment activities.?

It's impractical to set a completely secure environment from all manners of attack methodologies. But we can try to be ready for ever-changing flow of vulnerabilities and attacks. And IT Asset Management and Risk Assessment can be the first step towards making our data safe.?